Michael Shermer - the voice of the skeptic

A 14th century illustration depicting the torture and burning of women accused of witchcraft. Source: Wikimedia.

About witches and terrorists or why torture is ineffective

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Illustration: pixabay.

Are we all racist deep down?

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 Eliezer Yudkovski described how an AI apocalypse could happen. In a 2008 article he wrote: "How likely is it that artificial intelligence will cross the entire wide gap from amoeba to village fool, and then stop at the level of human genius?" And his answer: "From a physical point of view, it will be possible to build a brain that can calculate a million times faster than a human brain... If we accelerate a human brain in this way, a subjective year of thought will shrink to 31 physical seconds in the external world, and a thousand years will pass in eight and a half hours." Illustration: pixabay.

Does artificial intelligence endanger humanity?

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Evidence supports non-social causes of sexual orientation. Source: pixabay.

Sexual orientation: this is how we were born

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Shinjuku Ward, which is one of 23 wards in Tokyo. Greater Tokyo contains 35 million people and functions as a megacity. The number of megacities in the world will increase by 2030, and sixty percent of the human population will live in cities. From Wikipedia

Doomsday catch

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Cryogenics. Illustration: shutterstock

The afterlife of the atheists or whether the brain can be preserved after death

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Consent and unanimity

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The "food pyramid" according to the "Paleolithic diet" theory. Image: Maria Ticce/Shutterstock

The voice of the skeptic - Paleolithic diet, genetically modified food and food prohibitions / Michael Shermer

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Climate change denial. Illustration: shutterstock

The voice of the skeptic - to forge the doubt / Michael Shermer

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US President Barack Obama, photo from December 2014. Photo: Mykhaylo Palinchak / Shutterstock.com

The voice of the skeptic - a conspiracy for the masses / Michael Shermer

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American Spirit / Shutterstock.com

The voice of the skeptic - eternal peace / Michael Shermer

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probability. Illustration: shutterstock

The voice of the skeptic - surviving the statistics / Michael Shermer

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baby playing From WIKIMEDIA COMMONS CC license

The voice of the skeptic - the beginning of justice

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Virtual cities. Illustration: shutterstock

The voice of the skeptic - heaven on earth / Michael Shermer

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Religions in crisis - not in Israel. Illustration: shutterstock

The voice of the skeptic - is God dying? / Michael Shermer

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terrorism. Illustration: shutterstock

The voice of the skeptic - five myths about terrorism

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2 Dzhokhar Tsarnaev - self-photograph, image processing Dzhokhar Tsarnaev - self-photograph, image processing Share 0 In the article "A Beautiful Object" from last week, Yaki Manschenfreund justified the criticism of the photo of the Boston-based danger Dzhokhar Tsarnaev on the cover of "Rolling" Stone", and concluded that presenting it as a "beautiful object" insults the victims and their families, and basically any person with moral sensitivity. I liked Munchenfreund's analysis, but I do not agree with his conclusion. I tried to understand why the editors of "Rolling Stone" chose this particular photo, and in my humble opinion the explanation is quite simple and obvious: Tsarnaev looks like the cute neighbor's boy in the photo, a sensitive poet or a gigolo after a night of pleasure - but the editors of the magazine tell us: he is not what he is seen. He is a murderer. monster. The inscription on the cover leaves no room for doubt: "The terrorist. How a popular and promising student was failed by his family, degenerated into radical Islam and became a monster." The caption confronts the reader with the meaning of the image, balances it and attaches the proper interpretation to it. This is a message whose effect is much stronger precisely because of the controversial use of the photo, but the very claim that this photo of Tsarnaev humiliates the victims of the murder and belittles their relatives is demagogic and manipulative. And since when can the physical characteristics of a murderer "despise" or "respect" his victims? In addition, it is an approach that expresses a flat, binary view, according to which beautiful = good, ugly = bad, from the outside and from the inside. When "Rolling Stone" publishes a beautiful representation of a bad man, it breaks down the equation and builds a complex and even deceptive picture of reality. Perhaps he wants to convey a message to his readers: you will be able to understand this complex reality without us having to illustrate it for you with simplistic representations. By the way, the same photo of Tsarnaev was published in May prominently on the front page of the "New York Times", and even then received barrages of criticism. The presentation of Tsarnaev as a "beautiful object" raises another issue: this is not a press photo, but a self-portrait. At a certain point in time, Tsarnaev chose to present himself this way (as do all his peers). This self-photograph is seen as serving Tsarnaev's personal-subjective agenda, rather than as legitimate objective journalistic documentation. From this point of view, the criticism is about the privilege that was allegedly granted to Tsarnaev - to make use of this biased image representation of him, and to burn himself in the collective consciousness in a way that contradicts, or at least does not coincide, with his identification as a murderer. Dzhokhar Tsarnaev on the cover of "Rolling Stone", August 2013 The Boston Marathon victim Dzhokhar Tsarnaev on the cover of "Rolling Stone", August 2013

The voice of the skeptic - the crime scene, science

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The cover of the book "The Secret Race"

The voice of the skeptic - about tyrants and conservatives

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Nuclear waste in northern Australia

The voice of the skeptic - the left's war on science / Michael Shermer

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Excerpt from the BBC's reconstruction of the Stanford Prison Experiment

The voice of the skeptic - shock and awe / Michael Shermer

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Smoke billows over the Twin Towers on September 11, 2001. Photo: US National Park Service. From Wikipedia

The voice of the skeptic - contradictory conspiracies

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Brain scan of an Alzheimer's patient. Decreased function of many areas of the brain. Photo: from Wikipedia

The voice of the skeptic - the soul of Aunt Millie / Michael Shermer - a weekend of skepticism

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Barack Obama versus Mitt Romney - the candidates for the US presidency in the 2012 elections

The voice of the skeptic - the science of righteousness / Michael Shermer

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The glass is half full, from Wikipedia.

The voice of the skeptic - here goes the excessive optimism! / Michael Shermer

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The contestants of the Jeffery show including Watson - an IBM supercomputer

The voice of the skeptic - in 9595 / Michael Shermer

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Faith, love, hope - ceiling painting in the church of San Michael in the city of Untergriesbach in Germany. From Wikimedia

The voice of the skeptic - oh holy health! / Michael Shermer

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Creationist museum in the USA - shows humans and dinosaurs walking together on the earth before Noah's flood

The voice of the skeptic - what is pseudo-science? / Michael Shermer

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Flat Earth Society logo. From Wikipedia

The voice of the skeptic - globalization / Michael Shermer

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German poster from 1935 showing a Jewish conspiracy with the Freemasons for world domination

The voice of the skeptic - the conspiracy detector / Michael Shermer

The Knesset House - the center of Israeli democracy

The voice of the skeptic - The Democracy Lab

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The man from Piltdown - one of the most famous forgeries in science of the beginning of the 20th century

When scientists sin

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Survivors of the earthquake in Haiti, January 13, 2010. Photo: user canadianecross on the Flickr website

the sciences of the past

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Survive Death with Larry King Live

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The optimist looks at the world through rose-colored glasses

Raspberry juice psychology

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ET movie poster from Wikipedia. The alien is too human-like

Does IT look like us?

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Smoke billows over the Twin Towers on September 11, 2001. Photo: US National Park Service. From Wikipedia

The paranoia runs deep

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Cosmic scene with DNA, stars, solvents and atomic circles in oral flow.

want to believe

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Cosmic scene with DNA, stars, solvents and atomic circles in oral flow.

If I don't have an agent, who do I have? Why do people believe that invisible agents rule the world?

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Cosmic scene with DNA, stars, solvents and atomic circles in oral flow.

Inside the head of the exceptional

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Cosmic scene with DNA, stars, solvents and atomic circles in oral flow.

phone for the dead

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Cosmic scene with DNA, stars, solvents and atomic circles in oral flow.

Patterns

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Cosmic scene with DNA, stars, solvents and atomic circles in oral flow.

Invoice literacy in the Middle East

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Cosmic scene with DNA, stars, solvents and atomic circles in oral flow.

An insult to reason

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End of the first column. Maurice Garin, the conductor, stands with his hands folded. From Wikipedia

The dilemma of drugs in sports

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Cosmic scene with DNA, stars, solvents and atomic circles in oral flow.

Adam's Proverb and Spinoza's Hypothesis

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Cosmic scene with DNA, stars, solvents and atomic circles in oral flow.

The economic choice

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Cosmic scene with DNA, stars, solvents and atomic circles in oral flow.

The Unofficial Autobiography of Science

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Cosmic scene with DNA, stars, solvents and atomic circles in oral flow.

The really hard science

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Cosmic scene with DNA, stars, solvents and atomic circles in oral flow.

Rotten apple and barrels in Osha

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Cosmic scene with DNA, stars, solvents and atomic circles in oral flow.

About errors, mistakes and self-deception

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